Grammar. Some people love it, some people avoid it like the plague. Honestly, no matter
whether you love it or not, you need it to be able to communicate in English. In this
video, I'm gonna show you how you can improve your grammar quickly, easily, and without
driving yourself crazy. Make sure you also stay until the very end of the video cause
I have a very very exciting announcement for you. You know I don't do announcements that
often so when I do they are normally pretty good, so please stay until the end of the
video, you won't regret it, I promise. So before we get started with the first tip,
I'd just like to say hello and welcome back to any returning subscribers. If you are new
to my channel then hello and welcome, my name is Emma, this is my channel Pronunciation
with Emma. I focus on British pronunciation and accents, I also focus on grammar, vocabulary,
culture, slang, pretty much everything related to England and British English. So if all
that sounds like your cup of tea and you're interested in weekly videos, then hit that
subscribe button. Don't forget to also click that bell icon as well to receive notifications
every single time I post a new video or I go live. Tip number 1 is identify exactly
what problems you have with grammar. So, be very specific with this. Don't just say "oo
prepositions" "oo tenses", okay, which tenses? What kind of prepositions? Once you identify
those you'll be able to focus on those, correct those, practise those, and hopefully perfect
those. The next tip I recommend is reading. Some books that I recommend are, of course,
Harry Potter, I definitely recommend this one. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-time. A parallel text which essentially has one page in your target language, which
for you would be English, and another in your native language. And the last one I want to
recommend is a graded reader. So you can find graded readers with any type of story. This
one is Frankenstein, and this one is Frozen Pizza and Other Slices of Life. So, basically,
they take normal books, and they adapt them to certain levels, so you can find one that
is your level and read that. So when you're reading, take notice of any structures that
are new for you, structures that you're maybe familiar with already but they just need a
little bit more practice and reinforcement inside your brain. And start practising how
to use those. How do you practise? You practise with writing. So practise writing very short
sentences using those things that you have problems with. So for me with Spanish and
Portuguese, I have problems with past tenses, so I would write very short structures, very
short sentences, just practising the past tense. And I would keep practising and practising
and then comparing my answer with conjugation charts. That's basically all I did. And once
I practised, I would say after about 2 or 3 days, I got it. I was able to just use the
past tenses. I remembered the conjugation and the structures, how we use them, so actually,
I avoided the past tenses for so long and I don't even know why. I essentially convinced
myself that they were difficult and so I never practised them. But once I faced my fear,
let's say, and I started practising those past tenses. I got them and I've had no problems
since. So with your writing, see if you can find a teacher or a friend to correct those
sentences and give you some feedback. If you don't have anyone to give you feedback that's
no problem, there are other ways. You can download Grammarly which is essentially a
plugin into Google Chrome and this gives you basically, not feedback, but corrections on
your grammar. Now it's not going to correct everything, but it will definitely correct
any very obvious mistakes that you make. So it's good to get a little bit of feedback
and the plugin is free. Now another way that you can get feedback and corrections is by
using a good and reliable grammar book which has the answers in the back. One grammar book
which I highly recommend is this one. The English Grammar in Use book by Raymond Murphy.
Why do I love this book? I'll tell you. Now I believe that investing in a good grammar
book is crucial, honestly, I've seen some grammar books out there that can just have
the tiniest writing, so much explanation, and then very little practice. But this, my
friends, is the absolute best one I've come across. The reason why I love this book is
the way it's organised and the way it explains things. Actually, when I was becoming a teacher,
so when I was doing my teacher training, I used this book to help me practise my grammar.
Because it explains things so clearly and so easily and so well, I was able to understand
it. Okay? So then I could start teaching. That was many years ago when I did my teacher
training, but I still love it so it just shows how good this book is. If you are a fellow
teacher watching this video you can also use it with your students, so it can be used for
self-study or it can be used as essentially additional materials in your classes. The
book is essentially organised into different sections so it talks about different tenses,
talks about prepositions, which I mentioned at the beginning, that's always a massive
problem. There is a whole unit just dedicated to prepositions, which is fantastic. Also,
as I said, the explanations are so clear, so each section is essentially organised where
you have just the explanations, they are so so simple. They're so easy to get. So the
explanations are on one page and here you have plenty of exercises to practise everything
that is over here. So one key thing to mention with this book is that at the back we have
the key, these are all the answers we need for the exercises during the book basically.
So it's great for the teacher, and it's great for the student if they want to self-study.
The book is also designed so that you can choose any unit in any place at any time.
Okay? So you do not need to start from the first unit. I know some students, they start
from unit 1 and they're like "oh but I know this grammar already", that's fine, skip it,
it's okay, that's how the book was designed. So if you have problems with, look here, have
to and must, okay, maybe you have problems with this. This is unit 31, so you can go
straight to that, do those activities, practise, check your answers at the back, see how you're
doing, and that's that. Now if you're not sure what you need to study, what's great
is that there is a little test at the very back of the book that you can do. And at the
very back it will explain which unit you need to go to to practise those things that you're
having problems with. So during that little test at the back you can see what areas you
have difficulties with and it will tell you which unit in the book to go to to practise
that, so it's great. If you don't know what you have problems with, the book will tell
you. Also, if you need a little bit of guidance, right at the beginning of the book, there
are the author's notes so there are notes for students and notes for teachers. They
just give you a little bit of guidance on how to use the book so that's fantastic. A
little bit of extra support there for you. Now with the latest edition of the book there
is also the ebook available which you can download and you can use to practise your
pronunciation and listening skills. So if you'd really like to invest in a book I definitely
recommend this one. I just, I can't recommend it enough. Honestly, I really can't. It's
great. That's all I can say. So I will leave a link below if you'd like to purchase that,
now, something really really exciting for you, guys. Cambridge have told me that they
will give away not one, but two copies of this book, this exact book, to one teacher
and one student. All you have to do is this. In the comments below I would like you to
tell me whether you are a language teacher or a language student. Please tell me if you
are one or the other, I know us teachers are all technically students but do just tell
me one or the other. Okay? And also tell me, what is the part of grammar that you most
struggle with? If you are a teacher then what is it that your students struggle with the
most? So on Friday the 22nd it will close, we won't accept any more, and we will choose
a winner, 2 winners in fact. A student and a teacher. That is it. So guys, get commenting
down below, tell me, are you a student or are you a teacher? Also, don't forget to tell
me what problems do you have with grammar or what problems do your students have with
grammar if you are a teacher? Go and tell me those below, I'm so excited to read your
comments and find out more about your struggles. I may actually pick a couple of those and
then talk about them in future videos. I hope you have a fantastic week and I will see you
very very soon. Bye bye.